Lost Spacecraft

CD-ROM contains technical drawings and the recovery operations log.

For middle grade space enthusiasts, the amazing true story of the doomed Apollo 13 moon mission that nearly ended in disaster. April 13, 1970: Two hundred thousand miles from Earth and counting, an explosion rips through Jim Lovell’s spacecraft. The crippled ship hurtles toward the moon at three times the speed of sound, losing power and leaking oxygen into space. Lovell and his crew were two days from the dream of a lifetime—walking on the surface of moon. Now, they will count themselves lucky to set foot on Earth again. From “Houston, we’ve had a problem” to the final tense moments at Mission Control, Lost in Outer Space takes readers on the unbelievable journey of Apollo 13 and inside the minds of its famous and heroic astronauts. Complete with photographs of the crew and diagrams of the spacecraft, this is an up-close-and-personal look at one of the most thrilling survival stories of all time. “Fans of action-packed true survival stories will take to this real-life space episode—an easy pick for upper elementary schoolers.” —School Library Journal

The daring, revolutionary NASA that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon has lost its meteoric vision, says journalist and space enthusiast Greg Klerkx. NASA, he contends, has devolved from a pioneer of space exploration into a factionalized bureaucracy focused primarily on its own survival. And as a result, humans haven’t ventured beyond Earth orbit for three decades. Klerkx argues that after its wildly successful Apollo program, NASA clung fiercely to the spotlight by creating a government-sheltered monopoly with a few Big Aerospace companies. Although committed in theory to supporting commercial spaceflight, in practice it smothered vital private-sector innovation. In striking descriptions of space milestones spanning the golden 1960s Space Age and the 2003 Columbia tragedy, Klerkx exposes the “real” NASA and envisions exciting public-private cooperation that could send humans back to the moon and beyond.

When 15-year-old Ramon Garza's grades start to slip, he's forced to help out his mother after school. She's a food service worker at the NASA, which is about to launch another rocket ship to the moon. While there, Ramon meets the crew and watches as Apollo 13 soars into space on April 11, 1970. But only two days after the launch, the mission goes horribly wrong.

Called "spellbinding" (Scientific American) and "thrilling...a future classic of popular science" (PW), the up close, inside story of the greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons’ mission to Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and other key players. On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond. Nothing like this has occurred in a generation—a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA’s Voyager missions to Uranus and Neptune—and nothing quite like it is planned to happen ever again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA’s website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think that our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded in 2015 but made history and captured the world’s imagination. How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind this amazing mission: of their decades-long commitment and persistence; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and of the plans for New Horizons’ next encounter, 1 billion miles past Pluto in 2019. Told from the insider’s perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and others on New Horizons, and including two stunning 16-page full-color inserts of images, Chasing New Horizons is a riveting account of scientific discovery, and of how much we humans can achieve when people focused on a dream work together toward their incredible goal.

Voted the Best Space Book of 2018 by the Space Hipsters The dramatic inside story of the epic search and recovery operation after the Columbia space shuttle disaster. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the nation’s eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center was a key leader in the search and recovery effort as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal, state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest ground search operation in US history. This comprehensive account is told in four parts: Parallel Confusion Courage, Compassion, and Commitment Picking Up the Pieces A Bittersweet Victory For the first time, here is the definitive inside story of the Columbia disaster and recovery and the inspiring message it ultimately holds. In the aftermath of tragedy, people and communities came together to help bring home the remains of the crew and nearly 40 percent of shuttle, an effort that was instrumental in piecing together what happened so the shuttle program could return to flight and complete the International Space Station. Bringing Columbia Home shares the deeply personal stories that emerged as NASA employees looked for lost colleagues and searchers overcame immense physical, logistical, and emotional challenges and worked together to accomplish the impossible. Featuring a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and Eileen Collins, and dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search persons who lost their lives, this is an incredible, compelling narrative about the best of humanity in the darkest of times and about how a failure at the pinnacle of human achievement became a story of cooperation and hope.

CD-ROM contains technical drawings and the recovery operations log.

Provides a brief overview of the natural space environment - definition, related programmatic issues, and effects on various spacecraft subsystems. The primary focus, is to catalog, through representative case histories, spacecraft failures and anomalies attributed to the natural space environment.

The symposium is focused on manned space flight, and is primarily concerned with the life and the performance capability of the astronauts. The program of the conference is not confined to the life sciences alone but examines the 'space environment-man-machine' complex, and includes a discussion of technology, astrophysics, and astronomy, earth-based and space -bound.

The very first book on space systems failures written from an engineering perspective. Focuses on the causes of the failures and discusses how the engineering knowledge base has been enhanced by the lessons learned. Discusses non-fatal anomalies which do not affect the ultimate success of a mission, but which are failures nevertheless. Describes engineering aspects of the spacecraft, making this a valuable complementary reference work to conventional engineering texts.